You won't get memory leaks per se, but you may sometimes get tripped by the somewhat random order of destruction in final cleanup.

This usually only makes a difference if your class data includes objects that have a DESTROY method, eg:

  sub DESTROY {
    my $self = shift;
    $self->{dbh}->disconnect if $self->{connected};
  }
[download]

In that example, during global destruction it is possible that $self->{dbh} has been destroyed before this object, in which case you'd get an error in that DESTROY.

I often get around that problem with a simple:

  my $class_data; END { $class_data = undef }
[download]

.. which help to ensure things will be tidied up in an appropriate order by removing the need for perl to guess at a sensible order to destroy things.

Hugo